


Coordinator of Lima

by satonawall



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Vicar of Dibley AU, countryside AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5267510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(A very mangled) Vicar of Dibley AU: Kurt Hummel, the community coordinator of Lima, has not had the best experiences with Londoners who move in. The newest arrival, Blaine Anderson, just might change that, or then not.</p>
<p>Warnings: Kurt Hummel lives in the countryside for no particular reason. Also for no particular reason, they are all English.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coordinator of Lima

“Kurt! Kurt!”

Kurt came to a halt, sighed quietly and turned around. “Hi, Rachel.”

He liked her, he really did. She was enthusiastic and very knowledgeable of Broadway classics and always showed up to volunteer for whatever community project he had organised. But whenever she got excited on her own, things ended up- Well, they usually _ended_ well, that was the nicest way he could put it. He would spent a lot less of his time being mortified if Rachel never got any ideas, was all he was saying.

Rachel reached him, slowing her sprinting into a walk, and Kurt began moving again to stay at her side as they made their way towards the Town Hall and yet another dreary meeting of the Citizens’ Action Committee.

“Have you heard?” Rachel asked.

“No.” Kurt gave her an amused glance. “Unless you’re talking about Mrs Hagberg’s new goat. I saw it, too, it almost ate all my daffodils.”

Rachel’s brow furrowed; she had obviously not heard anything about Mrs Hagberg’s new pet. Kurt would have to fill her in, but not now, since Rachel seemed to decide her news were more important and pressed on.

“Blueshell Cottage has been let!”

That certainly caught Kurt’s attention. “It has?”

He hoped it was a family, or a retired couple. They were always easier to convince of the importance of the town community and of the merits of watercolour painting classes and the like. It would be all the more welcome since for the past few years, most new residents were residents only in theory. Kurt had nothing against Londoners; he’d been one and he loved Town. But renting a house in the country to come to for a few weekends a month was not very conducive to Kurt’s attempts to breathe some life back into the community. He’d taken to calling them townies, with that one certain tone and preceded by various epithets that he didn’t like to say out loud because he so often had children to work with and he was secretly terrified of them finding him funny and mocking him.

“Yes,” Rachel said, almost jumping up and down from excitement.

“To whom?”

“Miss Pillsbury said that his name is Blaine Anderson,” Rachel said. “He’s from London. Miss Pillsbury said he looks like a gentleman who would own a home in the country for occasional weekend getaways.”

Kurt groaned out loud. There were no ten-year-olds around; he could.

“Don’t tell me he’s yet another Mr St James or Ms July,” he said, resisting the urge to throw his satchel to the ground and stomp on it. “Breezing into the town every once in a while to brag about all his great London airs and all the shows he’s seen and all the restaurants he could have been to but hasn’t and laughing at all the wrong places during the community theatre productions and talking loudly about how culture probably should be dead this far away from civilisation.”

“He might be,” Rachel said. “Miss Pillsbury said that he was very charming and looked very Grease chic to her, and you know with her niceness that could mean that he’s a complete crook who will reverse right into the municipal flower benches and ruin the violets without remorse.”

Kurt nodded. “I should probably go greet him,” he said grudgingly. “For work. See what he’s like and if we need to reconsider the flowers for this year.”

“But we already ordered them!”

“We did,” Kurt said. “You’re right, I should just go there and tell him what’s what and set him straight about what sort of people live here.”

Rachel hummed her approval, which usually was disconcerting and made Kurt doubt himself because no plan Rachel so heartily approved could be a good plan, but they reached Town Hall and Kurt had to start bracing himself for fighting Will Schuester’s stupid outdated ideas yet again. (He had learnt a lot of patience during his time as Community Coordinator in Lima, but Disco Disco - the Best Hits of the Eighties was never going to happen, not on his watch.)

—

The meeting went mostly well, which meant that Kurt didn’t even want to strangle Will more than once or twice, which really was the best possible outcome for any meetings. He roped Finn and Mercedes into regular contributors for the town newsletter he’d been planning, approved Santana’s idea of organising a day trip to Brighton (he didn’t want to know what nefarious schemes she was planning that would require her to go there, but if anything could be said to praise her, she was discreet; the trip would work out regardless of her motives) and shot down every idea that Will had.

All in all, it left him in a good mood.

“We should go to Blueshell Cottage now,” Rachel said to him once the others were slowly starting to file out of the room. “He might leave otherwise. They always do.”

“Who does?” Finn asked.

Rachel blushed. “Flighty people,” she said and took Kurt’s arm.

Kurt had long ago stopped trying to understand what was going on at any given moment between Finn and Rachel, and now spent as little time thinking of it as he could as a best friend and a step brother.

He was only so very glad to talk to Rachel about how morally reprehensible it was to rent property in the country and then never be there so that no one else could take it and work to reinvigorate the countryside. By the time they arrived at Blueshell Cottage, he was positively fuming, and so was Rachel. It was a good mood to go into a confrontation, he thought as he reached to ring the bell.

There was some movement on the inside, some quiet words that sounded a lot like swearing (townies; they were all the same, couldn’t even imagine a neighbour coming in for a friendly visit) and finally, steps towards the door and the key turning in the lock.

“Hello,” Kurt said and then his jaw dropped.

The flippant and undoubtedly unpleasant townie was- Handsome was the only word Kurt could think of, with his gelled Cary Grant hair and his pleasantly proportional face and the casual woollen cardigan that couldn’t quite hide the muscle in his arms (the width had to be muscle, there was no way it wasn’t, not with the rest of his body looking like that). Or at least it was the only word he could think of until the man smiled at them (but mostly him, and he wasn’t lying to himself, he wasn’t) and said, “Hello”, because that was when Kurt had to add ‘charming’ to the list.

“Hello,” Kurt said, like an idiot, but at least Rachel said it in unison with him.

“I’m Blaine,” the townie said and offered his hand for them to shake (to Rachel first, but his fingers seemed to linger against Kurt’s in a way they didn’t with her). “You must be-“

“Kurt,” Kurt said, gathering the remnants of his dignity and clinging to them.

“I’m Rachel,” Rachel said, sounding at least as smitten as Kurt felt.

“Nice to meet you,” Blaine said, stepping out of the doorway. “Would you like to come in? I’m not really used to entertaining neighbours – it’s so refreshing compared to London – but I think I still have my basic manners.”

So he was indeed a Londoner like the rest of them, Kurt said to himself, except he couldn’t conjure up any of the annoyance and indignation at the fact, not after he’d looked into Blaine’s eyes and got lost.

“Yes,” he said, “that would be very nice of you. We’re actually not your neighbours, though, just thought we’d stop by. I’m the Lima Community Coordinator, it’s part of my job to do these sorts of things, try to get people involved in the community.”

“We were supposed to tell him what’s what,” Rachel whispered in his ear as Blaine let them in, took their coats to hang them and said something about putting a kettle on for tea.

“He doesn’t look like a good-for-nothing snob,” Kurt whispered back, angling his head to best see when Blaine would come back from the kitchen, and most certainly not so that he wouldn’t be caught whispering with Rachel.

“Sorry about all the boxes,” Blaine said as he came back. “I’ll have to plead just moved in, I have no other excuses.”

“We don’t care about that,” Kurt said and realised too late that Rachel was still sort of hanging onto him after their whispering. He took a step away; the last thing he needed was for Blaine to think he and Rachel were- It would be just his luck that the first time his gayness wouldn’t be blatant would be with a very hot and handsome man. “It’s just so nice that someone has finally rented the place. Are you planning on being here for long?”

“I’ll have to see.” Blaine blinked; it was a completely normal blink, but Kurt could focus on nothing but his incredibly long eyelashes. “I’m a- I work from home but I’ll have to keep going back to London regularly for meetings, so I was hoping I could become something of a reverse townie, you know, weeks here and weekends there. Unless there’s a lot of interesting things happening in Lima over the weekend?”

His tone had to be sarcastic. Given his words, it just had to be. Kurt couldn’t detect any, though, and Blaine was looking at him intently like he was trying to count Kurt’s eyelashes.

“Well,” Kurt said, “I try my best to come up with something for the bi-monthly Sunday market but-“ No one else seems to be into anything, at least no one over thirteen years of age. “We do have a weekly crafts club, though, and that meets on Wednesdays if you would be interested.”

Of course he wouldn’t, he was a sophisticated Londoner and could not care less about some club a Community Coordinator slash occasional wedding planner held in some godforsaken village mostly for little kids who were yet to learn to be ashamed of anything.

“Crafts club,” Blaine said. “Sounds wonderful.”

“I also have a choir,” Rachel butted in. She had been uncharacteristically quiet; Kurt had almost forgotten she was there. He really hoped she wouldn’t have been. “I mean, we have a choir. Here in the village. I lead it.”

Blaine turned to smile at her, and Kurt felt the loss of those eyes on him more keenly than he should have.

“That sounds wonderful. I- I really enjoy music and singing.” He turned to Kurt. “Are you a member as well?”

Kurt tried his best not to let it show that he positively preened under the special attention. “Yes. The best and only countertenor the choir has ever had.”

“I’m a soprano,” Rachel said, reclaiming Blaine’s attention. “And I have to say, for a pompous no-good townie, you’re really quite pleasant.”

Kurt wanted to die and sink into the carpet. He didn’t need to see a mirror to know his cheeks were blushing red. It was just-

“Excuse me,” he said, although he wasn’t sure if Blaine and Rachel even heard him because he was already halfway out the door. “I need to- Go look at tuxes for the wedding.”

Luckily, he was already on his own door before he realised that bringing up weddings probably was not the best idea.

—

He slept badly; it was partially his own fault because since he’d already used it as an excuse, it seemed like a good idea to look at tuxes he could maybe try to sell Mike on for his and Tina’s wedding he was planning for them, and then he forgot about time as he really got into it. But even after he’d gone to bed at 2 am, he kept tossing and turning and trying to get Blaine’s eyes out of his mind. Eventually, the eyes changed to the hands and the arms, and Kurt rolled over and decided that was good enough and fell asleep.

Rachel woke him up at 6.30 by calling him to talk about choir arrangements, and Kurt cursed under his breath and got up. He’d have to be at work at 9 am anyway, he might as well go jogging and eat breakfast and pretend he hadn’t just humiliated himself next to the only man in the town he had ever been interested in.

That plan, like everything Kurt tried seemed to recently, was shot to hell when he ran past the church and heard a cheery, “Hey, Kurt!” from some twenty yards away.

Kurt stopped running, told himself he would have to face the misery sometime and turned around.

“Hi, Blaine,” he said. “Getting to know the town?”

Blaine was, mercifully, also in running gear so Kurt didn’t have to feel self-conscious about that. He jogged slowly towards Kurt until he was within three yards and then slowed down to a walk.

“I was so excited I could barely sleep,” he said. “It’s a beautiful town.”

Just the fact that he was looking at Kurt when he said it was enough to make Kurt blush. He should really get a grip.

“It is,” Kurt said. “Everyone here is a massive weirdo, but it is a beautiful town.”

Blaine laughed. “You seem relatively normal.”

“I’m not from around here. I think they bathe their children in contaminated water or something.”

They started walking slowly. Kurt didn’t mention it was in the direction Blaine had come from. If Blaine noticed, he might say goodbye to Kurt and continue his regularly scheduled jogging.

“How long have you been living here?” Blaine asked.

“Five years, give or take. I-“ Needed to get as far away from London, mentally, as possible, because a complete douchebag broke my heart. “I wanted a change of scenery, and they had a lot of trouble finding a Community Coordinator.” He glanced at the houses they were passing. “It was a marriage of convenience, but they grew on me. Once I’m done with the current wedding, I think I’ll even host a ceremony.”

Blaine frowned. “Wedding?”

“I’m also the best wedding planner in the county,” Kurt said and tried to make it sound like a joke instead of the brag that it clearly was. “Coordinating this community doesn’t take that much time.”

“Wow.” The frown had disappeared as quickly as it came, and Blaine flashed him a very bright smile. “You’re a man of many talents.”

Kurt tried not to preen. He wasn’t very successful.

“And what do you do?” he asked. “And what could possibly make you decide to do it here rather than in London?”

Unless Blaine had had his heart broken as well. He didn’t look that way, and Kurt was almost certain that there had to be something more than neighbourly pleasantness in his eyes when he looked at Kurt, but he’d been very wrong about these things before.

“I-“ Blaine looked away for a second and then looked at Kurt again, his expression very sheepish indeed. “Don’t laugh, okay?”

“Okay.”

He probably couldn’t anyway, he would be far too giddy to know something about Blaine Blaine obviously didn’t like to tell just anyone.

“I’m a composer,” Blaine said. “For ad agencies.”

Kurt didn’t laugh. It didn’t even require that much effort, even though Blaine’s face was certainly amusing with its cautious expression.

“With that preamble, I was expecting something a lot worse,” he said. “Anything I would have heard?”

Blaine laughed, the cautiousness vanishing. “Oh god, no, I’m not going to play that game. It never ends well for me.”

Which meant that there probably was at least something Kurt would recognise. He didn’t want to push, though. It wasn’t even close to being something he’d most want to know about Blaine.

“And what brings you here, Blaine?” he asked, smiling widely and hoping Blaine wouldn’t take his words to be mocking.

It didn’t look that way.

“I just got tired of the hustle and bustle of London,” Blaine said. “And the rents. Plus I never got to learn the name of a single neighbour. Mrs Marsden came by with a pie as Rachel was leaving last night. That was wonderful.”

“Her pies are delicious,” Kurt agreed. “I hope Rachel didn’t insult you too much after I left.”

He really should have gone into acting; he almost seemed like he wasn’t about to die from embarrassment just at the memory of how he had left.

Blaine didn’t seem to be thinking about that, though.

“Oh, no, she was quite civil,” he said. “We talked about her choir. I didn’t tell her- you know, but I did say I’d love to join it.”

“You just got yourself a new best friend.” Kurt laughed. “She’s really attached to the thing, you’d think it was the Vienna Philharmonic.”

“Well, I do love music.” Blaine bit his lip. “Although, as much as I liked talking to Rachel, I’d kind of hoped you’d stay longer.”

It felt like all air had been knocked out of his lungs in the best way possible, but somehow, Kurt still managed to smile and say, “Really?” without sounding like a fish out of water.

“Yes,” Blaine said, and he didn’t even seem embarrassed. God, Kurt would fall in love already if he wasn’t careful. “But now that I so luckily found you again, would you like to have dinner sometime? Say, tonight?”

Kurt took a deep breath that Blaine hopefully didn’t notice was a deep breath. “Sure,” he said. “There’s not really a huge variety of restaurants in town, but the pub has great fish and chips.”

“Sounds perfect,” Blaine said, and for a moment Kurt thought he’d say his goodbyes now and leave Kurt float off into the sky with his heart eyes and budding fantasies of joint bank accounts, but instead, Blaine walked him all the way to Kurt’s house and promised to pick him up around seven.

For his part, Kurt said that would suit him very well, closed his front door and slumped against it, his head spinning and his heart pumping faster than if he’d actually spent the past hour running.

—

Kurt had always been overdressed for Lima (just because there was nothing to dress up for didn’t give you an excuse, something which no one else in the town seemed to have grasped), but that night that was a blessing, since it wasn’t blatantly obvious to everyone that he most certainly had something very worthwhile to dress up for.

Blaine was right on time, standing on Kurt’s doorstep like he’d stepped out of a fifties film. He would have only needed a bouquet of roses to be the spitting image of that, and when Kurt, in a sudden moment of temporary insanity, said that thought out loud, Blaine blushed a little.

“I almost picked a violet from the flower benches on the way here,” he said, “but then I thought about how much work someone had to do for those benches and I didn’t dare.”

Kurt beamed at him. “You chose wisely,” he said. “It was a community effort, which means that I organised it.”

Blaine smiled right back at him and offered him his arm. “Shall we?”

Kurt couldn’t give him an intelligible reply – this had to be a date, right? No one would act like this with a new just-a-friend – but he did loop his arm through Blaine’s. “Let’s.”

—

The local pub was not romantic, and ordinarily Kurt would have loved none of his dates to involve Santana in any way whatsoever, but it was the only place in town where you could sit down for more than ten minutes.

Besides, it was happy hour so absolutely no one paid any attention to their small table in the most remote corner Kurt could find.

“Sorry about Santana,” he said as they sat down. “For what it’s worth, if she gave you a nickname already it means she hopes to see you around town again.”

Blaine ducked his head. “I didn’t mind. I’ve had worse ones.”

“Well, at least you can neatly avoid Ms Sylvester-“ And before Kurt knew it, he’d ran through his best Sue Sylvester anecdotes, Blaine listening attentively and laughing in all the right places, and Brittany had brought them their plates.

“I don’t know if it’s just the country air or the good company,” there was just enough sparkle in Blaine’s eyes for him to sound both joking and absolutely serious, “but this might just be the best fish and chips I’ve ever tasted.”

“Tell that to Santana, she might smile at you the next time you come here.”

His words did nothing to hide his pleased blush, though, and Kurt wasn’t even sure he wanted to. It had been a blatant compliment, hadn’t it?

Blaine beamed at him and began regaling him with stories of his older brother, Cooper (Kurt was embarrassed to admit he had had that commercial as his ringtone for a while and was quick to move the conversation to Blaine’s boxing; blatantly staring at someone’s arms was okay if it made them smile at you like that, right?), and they kept up a lively discussion all the way through their meal and desserts.

By the time Kurt finally set down his spoon on his empty cheesecake plate, he was pretty sure he was in love.

Blaine’s sweet and unassuming smile when he asked if he could walk Kurt home did nothing to change that feeling.

They kept up the light conversation on the way to Kurt’s.

“I had a lot of fun tonight,” Blaine said as they stood on Kurt’s door and Kurt was going through his pockets for his key.

His fingers curled around the key, and Kurt looked up to smile at Blaine.

“Me too.”

“Could we do this again sometime?”

“Yeah.” His throat felt suddenly dry and his lungs empty. “I’d love that.”

He pulled his hand out of his pocket, but before he could start fitting the key into the lock, Blaine’s hand came up to catch his.

Kurt looked into his eyes and forgot how to breathe. Blaine’s eyes were warm, trained intently at him and, wow, getting slowly closer as Blaine leaned in in a way that could only mean one thing.

He was in love with and about to be kissed by a man he had barely known existed just twenty-four hours ago.

The thought was startling enough for him to lean away, the movement forcing him to move his feet accordingly so as to not add to the awkwardness of the situation by ungracefully falling down.

Blaine moved back immediately, but he didn’t let go of Kurt’s hand.

“Sorry,” he said, looking away and then immediately back at Kurt. “I- I misread the signals again, I’m sorry, I should already have learnt I can’t trust myself wi-“

“I- You-” Kurt took a deep breath, now that he knew how to do that again. “You didn’t misread anything.”

Blaine’s gaze on him was almost uncomfortably intense, but it was a discomfort Kurt would welcome any day if it would always make the butterflies in his stomach fly like that.

“Well,” Blaine said slowly, “in that case, I’m sorry for trying to go faster than you’re comfortable with.”

Kurt opened his mouth to point out that expecting a kiss at the end of a very good first date was hardly the most presumptuous thing anyone he’d ever dated had done, but he realised in time that he really shouldn’t give Blaine ammunition against himself.

“It’s okay,” he said, turning his hand so that it was holding Blaine’s. “I- Call me?”

“Tomorrow.” Blaine squeezed his hand. “If that’s okay.”

Regretfully, Kurt pulled his hand away and opened his front door. “Yeah. Tomorrow’s great.”

Blaine moved forwards to take Kurt’s hand again, held it for a moment and let Kurt walk in.

Blaine was already well on his way back to the gate and the door was almost closed when-

“Kurt!”

The sound shook Kurt away from one of his own personal fantasies, and for a second he thought he’d fallen straight into another one and Blaine was going to proclaim his undying love there and then.

“I don’t have your number,” Blaine said, walking back towards the door and holding out his phone.

It probably should have ruined something of the romance of the evening, but as Kurt laughed and programmed his number into Blaine’s phone, he couldn’t help feeling like it had just been the cherry on top.

—

He was out the following day, taking a bunch of kids to paint views of the town from a hill higher up, and one of them dropped his watercolours on his shirt and another only agreed to paint dinosaurs destroying the town, but all in all it wasn’t not a bad day. Kurt had had worse. A lot worse.

And anyway, when the last child ran to her mother and Kurt looked away to see Blaine walking on the other side of the park, it went straight into the good day category. He waved goodbye to Mrs and Sarah Peterson and was off after Blaine as fast as he could.

“Thought I’d save you the cost of a phone call,” he said as he caught Blaine. “I saw you from the other side of the park, I swear I wasn’t stalking you.”

“What makes you think I would mind if you did?” Blaine asked, and they both winced and then laughed because it sounded bad when said out loud like that.

It turned out Blaine was taking another walk to get to know Lima, and he was more than eager to accept Kurt as his guide.

“It’s really beautiful here,” he said as Kurt took a breath after his long spiel about the church bell. His smile turned slightly mischievous. “And the town isn’t bad either.”

Kurt laughed and ducked his head and hoped he looked less smitten than he felt, or that at least Blaine liked smitten.

“Well it certainly got a lot more beautiful after you showed up,” he said when he could speak again.

Blaine grinned at him and asked something about the cemetery.

Before Kurt even realised it, they were just a few streets away from his house.

“I live close by,” he said. “Would you like to come in? I could make some tea, it’s getting a little chilly.”

“I would love tea.” Blaine bit his lip. “But since you so nicely offered, let me make it up to you by keeping your hand warm on the way.”

His outreached hand left little doubt as to how he planned to do that.

Kurt suppressed his giggle, took Blaine’s offered hand and began leading him towards Kurt’s house.

While the kettle was on, Kurt showed him around the first floor, mostly because his house was a work of art and he took every chance he got to show it off. Blaine made all the appropriate noises of appreciation and had a few very interesting opinions on Kurt’s country-chic grandfather clock. The tasteful not-a-shrine-thank-you-very-much-Rachel (it most certainly was _not_ the same thing as her weird Barbra Streisand room, whatever she tried to tell him) for Alexander McQueen gained the compliments due as well.

“His work is not at all my style, but I can appreciate good clothes when I see them.”

Kurt stood up straighter. “You’re familiar with his work? You’re probably the second person in this town to even have heard his name.”

Which was an outrage of the worst kind, obviously, but Kurt had live there for years; he’d got used to the fact that most people bought their clothes from the nearby Primark or even the local supermarket.

Blaine smiled at him. “Who isn’t?”

Kurt wanted to jump up and down from joy, but he refrained. “I know. But tell that to everyone else around here. Rachel wears animal-print sweaters on the regular, and I swear Finn cannot tell the difference between regular trousers and sportswear.”

Blaine shook his head with appropriate disbelief. “I hope they at least appreciate your good fashion sense.”

He wanted to laugh – Blaine was so new here, it was adorable – but he refrained. “Well, at least you do,” he said and gave an appreciative look to Blaine’s own ensemble (he admired everyone who would wear a bowtie to a casual walk around the village).

“I certainly do.” Blaine frowned a little. “Should I know Finn? I don’t think I’ve heard you mention him before?”

“Stepbrother,” Kurt said and hoped he hadn’t just imagined the relief on Blaine’s face. They were on their second date, right, he should have been a little concerned if Kurt had had someone else in the wings. “Don’t- Don’t ask for how that came to be, it’s a very long story that’s most certainly not a second date talking point.”

Still smiling widely, Blaine pretended to zip up his lips as the water boiled in the other room.

“Be right back,” Kurt said and was off to take a short breathing break. How was it that Blaine only needed to smile at him and his heart already beat as quickly as if he’d run a marathon?

He came back with the tea and the prettiest of the macarons he’d made a few days before, and they sat down at the living room table and got lost in a discussion.

It was already eight o’clock when Blaine finally looked at his pocket watch (Kurt hoped the noise he made at the sight of that was just inside his head and not actually audible) and regretfully announced that he needed to go.

“Maybe this time I’ll actually be able to call you like I promised,” he said as he was putting on his coat.

Kurt leaned against the wall and watched him put on his scarf. “Well, there’s that three-day rule about calling someone.”

Blaine buttoned his coat and stepped a little closer. “Who could wait for three days if they had the phone number of someone like you?”

Kurt wasn’t really thinking, but even in hindsight, he couldn’t bring himself to regret the impulse that made him leave the wall and the support it offered, walk up to Blaine, put his hands on Blaine’s shoulders and kiss him.

Blaine returned the kiss immediately, like he’d been waiting or at least hoping for it, his hands settling on Kurt’s waist to keep Kurt close, the cotton of Kurt’s shirt so thin that he could feel the warmth of Blaine’s palms through it.

“I don’t know how I could even wait a day for someone like _you_ ,” he said when they pulled away, not stepping back or giving up his grip on Blaine’s shoulders.

It would definitely be too forwards to ask him to stay, no matter how tempting it was right then.

Blaine’s hand came up to cradle his cheek, and Kurt leaned his head towards it before he even realised he’d done it.

“I would have waited a lot longer,” he said before leaning in for another, short and sweet kiss.

Kurt managed to compose himself just enough to see Blaine to the door, exchange another kiss and promise to see him later. After he closed the door, though, he almost slid down to the floor and sighed from awe.

Then again, after he managed to curb that impulse and looked outside from behind his curtains, he could see Blaine take a few dance steps on the pavement. It was all okay if it was completely mutual.

—

He woke up in a good mood, which was very good because the heating was being difficult again and he had to spend the first hour of his day trying to make it work.

It would be weird to go and see Blaine right after breakfast, he told himself as he sat down to eat his fruit salad.

Then again, Blaine worked from home and would probably be there, and Kurt could say he’d just been passing by on his morning jog and thought to pop in to say hi. That was a thing people did in the country, or at least if it wasn’t, Blaine wouldn’t know and wouldn’t think that Kurt, specifically, was weird for doing it.

He put on his most flattering jogging gear, debated for a few minutes whether to do his hair (of course; when did he ever not?) and left the house.

He could see Blaine on the driveway of his house from the other end of the street, but Blaine was on the phone and had his back to the street so Kurt could approach without being seen. It sounded like a pleasant element of surprise until he got close enough to hear what Blaine was saying and was treated to a very infatuated, “Oh, Sam, I-“ which made him jump behind a juniper tree on instinct (he really spent too much time with Rachel).

“Everything is just perfect, I can’t wait for you to come and see it,” Blaine said next, turning around but thankfully not noticing that his juniper had grown two legs. “And the church here is really charming and you know I never thought of a church wedding for myself, but every time I walk past it I just can’t help thinking-“

At that point, “Sam” probably cut him off, which Kurt really appreciated because it gave him a moment to literally (it felt like that, anyhow) hear his heart break.

“Yeah, I know.” Blaine’s voice was soft and sweet like honey, and oh god, Kurt had been so stupid to think he might be the only one to hear Blaine use that tone. “I’m getting ahead of myself, but it just feels so right. We’ll talk about this more when you get here, okay? Three o’clock.” A pause. “Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

Kurt put his fingers in his ears so as to not hear the ‘I love you’ that had to be Blaine’s goodbye of choice.

Mercifully, Blaine went back inside and Kurt could manoeuvre himself away from behind the tree without being seen. He walked back home, feeling like the ground had been pulled away from under him.

—

“Kurt! Your sadness is seeping into the room, we cannot practice cheerful songs here if you go on like this.”

He gave Rachel a look. “Sorry.”

“You should tell me what it is that’s bothering you,” Rachel said. “From what I hear, you should be quite happy with your life at the moment. Santana even almost smiled when she told me about your date with Blaine the other night.”

Kurt sighed. He would have loved nothing more than to vent to Rachel, mostly because the flipside of Rachel’s ridiculous tendency towards the dramatic was that she could always be counted on to enable the same trait in Kurt.

Of course, the flipside of that was that Kurt could not tell her anything about Blaine’s deceptive behaviour and his apparently-not-so-secret lover without risking Rachel marching over to Blaine’s house right there and then and giving him a piece of her mind, which would indubitably result in utter humiliation for Kurt, even if she had his best interests at heart.

“I don’t think he’s as into me as I am into him,” he said.

At least that wasn’t a lie.

Rachel abandoned browsing through her notes and levelled her gaze at him, tilting her head as if the angle could give her some insight.

“Well in that case you’re already drafting wedding tuxes because I am fairly sure I saw hearts in his eyes a few nights ago when he asked about you after you left.”

Kurt groaned. He really didn’t want to be reminded of that, on top of everything. Not that it mattered all that much now that it was very obvious he and Blaine were not meant to be.

“Please tell me you didn’t say anything embarrassing.”

“It wasn’t my fault if he was scared off,” Rachel said defensively. “I stressed your very impressive vocal range and your enthusiasm for the local community. He seemed very interested.”

Kurt sighed. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Blaine seemed very interested, but what did that mean if he was planning a quaint country wedding with some guy on the phone? Besides, it didn’t really help his mood that he’d learnt all that by eavesdropping, and that, if anything was rude. He should probably apologise to Blaine for that.

“I wasn’t blaming you,” he said and stood up. “I have to go, I have to- There’s paperwork.”

That was true, too. There was always paperwork. Kurt just wasn’t going to do anything about that right then.

He’d go to Blaine’s and apologise for accidentally eavesdropping on him that morning. It was a great plan, mostly because Blaine didn’t seem like the tight-lipped type and would probably both forgive him instantly and tell him about that Sam guy, which would be heart-breaking for Kurt but at least then he’d know for sure and could start trying to move on.

It was, of course, only when he was already on Blaine’s street and saw a blonde guy with a large mouth talking to Blaine on the front porch that Kurt realised it was ten past three in the afternoon, and the mysterious Sam had probably just arrived.

He jumped behind the juniper again. He wasn’t proud of it, but it happened. It would be too embarrassing to apologise for eavesdropping and be introduced to Blaine’s future husband in the same conversation.

“It’s wonderful,” Blaine said and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Not the most intimate gesture, but Kurt had done more awkward things when he’d been testing the waters about what sort of physical affection was acceptable for a gay man in Lima. “Just, I mean- Obviously it’s not just the town, it’s also who’s in it-“

“Relax, Blaine,” Sam said. His voice sounded like it belonged to a tanned Californian surfer. Kurt could never get as good a tan as someone who had that sort of voice probably could. “It’s okay, I’m here. I get what you mean. I kinda agree.”

It was certainly not the passionate confession of love Kurt couldn’t help feeling Blaine deserved (well, he didn’t, if he was cheating on Sam by kissing innocent community coordinators, but Kurt was in love already, he couldn’t fall out of it that easily), but Kurt’s heart broke all over again.

“I can’t wait to show you all the great walking paths I’ve discovered,” Blaine said. “We can talk, too.”

That was the point where Kurt hid further behind the juniper tree as Blaine and Sam passed him, and then went home after they’d left for their romantic walk.

At least in theory, if Kurt had been a better person.

He didn’t know how it happened, but one moment that was his plan and the next he was hiding behind a statue of Richard the Carrotfinger, a local mediaeval hero, as he stalked Blaine and Sam through the park.

Today was really not going to be the best day of his life.

He followed Blaine and Sam through the park, along quiet roads and once even across a field. They didn’t do anything besides talk, and Kurt was too far to hear what they were saying, except that at some point Sam definitely said ‘marriage’.

As far as he knew, they didn’t see him. At least, not until he decided to leave them alone and go home, which of course was when they rounded the corner and walked straight towards him.

Luck really wasn’t on his side.

“Kurt!” Blaine said, blushing instantly. (Or maybe it was just that he’d been walking around the town for maybe an hour. That would give a healthy glow to anyone’s cheeks.)

“Hi, Blaine.” Kurt tried to muster a smile at Sam. Out of all of them, he was the most wronged party; he was the one Blaine talked about marriage to, it had to be pretty serious. “Hi…”

“Sam,” Sam said, offering his hand for Kurt to shake.

“We were just-“ Blaine trailed off, and Kurt would have felt sorry for him if it wasn’t for the current situation.

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” Kurt said, putting on a friendly face.

“You too, man.” Sam grinned at him. “Blaine’s told me a lot about you. Bet he hasn’t even mentioned me to you, huh,” this was accompanied by a gentle nudge at Blaine’s arm, “how’s that for treating your-“

“He likes to embarrass me,” Blaine said, looking plenty embarrassed.

“I understand.” That sounded clipped, didn’t it? “You met Rachel, it seems to be the curse around here.”

“Something in the air, right?” Blaine bit his lip. “We should probably go, there’s-“

“Yeah, there’s that thing,” Sam said. “It was great to meet you, Kurt.”

“You too,” Kurt said to their backs since Blaine was already dragging Sam to the other direction before he could even open his mouth.

—

He went home and parked himself on the sofa with a pint of ice cream. It was kind of like a break-up, wasn’t it? Anyway, he was a grown-up and grown-ups could spend their evening moping and eating ice cream if they wanted to. Moments like these, they were worth filing tax returns and sitting through boring meetings at work.

He was halfway through the pint when he was struck by a thought even more depressing than his moping about Blaine having turned out to be not boyfriend (don’t think husband, don’t think husband, that would be way too soon) material.

Someone really should tell Sam.

Maybe they had an open relationship, he thought. That would be very modern and very good in the sense that at least then his memories of Blaine wouldn’t be tainted by cheating. But at the same time, Kurt couldn’t imagine Blaine going for it.

He didn’t know Blaine, he tried telling himself. That much had become abundantly clear. For all he knew, Blaine couldn’t keep the same boyfriend for a week.

It was a mean thought and it only managed to make him sad, so Kurt pulled at his hair, spooned more ice cream into his mouth and tried to forget about it.

He’d just finished the pint and was in the process of sticking his tongue into the pot to get the last of the melted ice cream when the doorbell rang.

It was probably Rachel, he thought as he made his way to the door. Only she would have such bad timing.

He pulled the door open without checking from the windows who it was, and then froze on the spot as he laid eyes on his visitor.

“Hi.” Blaine’s smile was wide, as it always was, and it didn’t die at the sight of Kurt’s messy hair and (he could only assume) ice cream-covered face. “Can I come in?”

No, no, he could not, he was the last person Kurt would have invited to his pity party and he needed to leave immediately.

Kurt didn’t manage to open his mouth, but he did move away from the door to let Blaine walk past him and into the house.

“You look like you had a rough day,” Blaine said with a small laugh. As Kurt still didn’t say anything, his smile vanished and was replaced with a concerned expression. “Kurt? Kurt, is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Kurt said, forcing himself to smile. He could feel the drying ice cream on his skin, and god, that was not what he was supposed to be thinking about. “Everything’s great, why wouldn’t it be?”

Blaine didn’t look like he believed him, but the concern gave way to another smile. “Well, in that case, could we talk for a moment?”

“Sure.” He was supposed to invite Blaine into the living room, but that wasn’t going to happen, not while the sofa looked like Kurt had been lying on it for hours feeling sorry for himself. Sometimes verisimilitude was not a good thing. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I-“ Blaine ducked his head like he was just the tiniest bit ashamed and then looked up again and straight at Kurt. “I have to confess something. I keep thinking about marriage.”

Kurt hoped blood didn’t leave his cheeks quite as obviously as it felt it did. He’d been hoping Blaine would come clear about Sam to him, at least, but- This was not the way he’d been hoping.

“You do?” he asked, sounding like the most awkward of all the awkward ducks even in his own ears.

“Yeah.” Blaine took a step closer. “And- I mean, we just met a few days ago, I feel so presumptuous to even bring it up, but do you… Would you ever even consider…?”

When Blaine would leave, Kurt decided, he was going to reward himself with another pint of ice cream for not screaming. And after eating that ice cream, he would find a way to get back at Rachel for telling Blaine he was a part-time wedding planner. At least he would find out if he was a genuinely good person after all, or if he would intentionally sabotage Blaine and Sam’s wedding so that at least the day would an equally unhappy memory for all of them.

“You want me?” he asked, just to clarify. “For your wedding?”

He was getting angry, he realised distantly. The predominant feeling was still sadness, but under it, anger was beginning to bubble.

Blaine chuckled and Kurt could have sworn his eyes were sparkling when he looked at Kurt and said, “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

The sparkling would probably have been enough to kill Kurt’s anger _and_ sadness just a day before, but not anymore. The sparkle was all for Sam.

Kurt opened his mouth to say something, realised he had no idea what that something would be and closed it again to win some time.

The thing that plan didn’t take into account, though, was that whichever feeling was winning, anger or sadness, Kurt’s body’s default response to it was crying.

He looked away so that Blaine wouldn’t notice, but it was too late.

“Kurt?” Blaine said, and in a flash he was there, not quite touching Kurt but close enough that Kurt could feel him. He felt colder than the air; it had to already be quite chilly outside. “Kurt, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, I just- I wanted to be honest with you, you deserve that and-“

“Stop!” Kurt shouted and only then realised that he had, actually, shouted at all. “Stop,” he said in a quieter tone, turning away from Blaine.

Blaine didn’t try to come any closer, but Kurt didn’t hear him move away, either. He took a few shaky breaths and turned around. Better to rip it off like a band-aid, right?

“I know that men in Lima are generally incapable of understanding human feelings, but you couldn’t genuinely think I would just be happy to hear you come in and ask-“

“Kurt-“

Blaine fell quiet as Kurt raised his hand.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he said and then soldiered on before the urge to run off would become overwhelming. “I can’t plan your wedding to someone else, and it’s really tactless of you to ask me to.”

He tried his best to glare at Blaine after that announcement, but it became too much and he looked away as he threw his arms around himself.

Blaine moved towards him and Kurt could see in his peripheral vision how Blaine raised his hand, but he dropped it again before it touched Kurt. Smart move, Kurt thought and told the tears to stay in.

“You lo-“ Blaine cut himself off. “Kurt, I- I don’t want you to plan a wedding for me and someone else. I don’t even have any idea who else that could be.”

That comment gave Kurt just enough guts to glare at Blaine. “Sam? The guy who’s in your house, probably relaxing after a long day of romantic walks in a quaint little country town?”

“Sam?” Blaine barely got the word out of his mouth before he burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter. “Sam? I- Oh my- Kurt, he’s my best friend and London flatmate, but that’s all. He’s very straight and probably in Santana’s pub right now hoping that the gorgeous woman who said hi to us today will drop by.”

“But-“ He was shaking, but realising it did not help him stop. “You were talking to him about wanting to marry him in the Lima church just this morning!”

He realised too late that he’d just effectively admitted to spying on Blaine, but luckily that was not the part that Blaine hung onto. Instead, he took another step towards Kurt so that their bodies were almost touching. It would have probably been heavenly torture if Kurt’s mind wasn’t still too frayed from the whole Sam debacle.

“I was talking about you,” Blaine said. “He was supposed to come and see me today anyway, but I called him to gush about you because I felt like I would burst if I didn’t, or do something even more embarrassing like propose to you on our third date.”

Kurt looked up, his stomach dropping once more, but this time it felt a lot more pleasant.

“You-“ He tried to get the words out. “You like… me?”

“Obviously,” Blaine said and put his hand on Kurt’s arm. “Or maybe I should say I think I’m in love with you, too.”

Now it was Kurt who burst into laughter, although he was quite sure his was more hysterical than Blaine’s.

“You think you love me,” he said when he finally got a hold of himself. Blaine had thankfully not gone anywhere, which was very handy when Kurt threw his arms around Blaine and pulled him flush against himself.

“I do,” Blaine said in his ear. That alone was enough for Kurt to pull away just the right amount so that he could push his lips against Blaine’s and kiss him like he’d thought he’d never again be able to.

—

“Good morning,” Blaine said, grinning at him from behind the stove when Kurt stumbled into the kitchen the following morning.

Kurt rubbed at his eyes and gave Blaine as wide a smile as he could manage after he’d woken up to an alarm at seven am in an empty bed. His panic had been short-lived because Blaine had helpfully left him a note about being downstairs making breakfast, but it was still more excitement than Kurt had ever wanted to get at seven am after a very pleasant evening.

“Well, it certainly just became a whole lot better,” he said, hesitating a little before walking up to Blaine and putting his arms around Blaine’s waist and his chin on Blaine’s shoulder, looking down at the stove. “Pancakes?”

“Everyone likes pancakes,” Blaine said as he flipped one on the pan. His hand found Kurt’s and he laced his fingers with Kurt’s, squeezing gently. “Do you have to leave for work soon or…?”

“I have to be there around eight.” He didn’t even try to hide his regretful tone. “And I should get to work on my hair or else everyone is going to comment on it the whole day and start making hugely inappropriate suggestions.”

Blaine turned his head to press a kiss against Kurt’s cheek. “Maybe I could come by after you get off work.”

“You definitely should,” Kurt said and tightened his hold around Blaine’s waist. “Don’t you dare stay away.”

As he watched Blaine pour more batter onto the pan, he wondered if asking someone to move in with you was an acceptable fourth date activity. Blaine had been thinking of proposals for the third one, it didn’t seem like he’d be spooked by it.

(He wasn’t. He’d rented Blueshell Cottage for six months and couldn’t give up the contract before that, but he most certainly was not spooked.)

(When the moving day finally came, there really wasn’t much of anything to move anymore. Kurt’s living room had been reorganised to accommodate the piano for a couple of months already.)


End file.
